Tips for startups- To run a successful lead generation campaign

One of the major challenges in today’s market is effective lead generation, and this is especially true for new startups. Most startups today fully understand their product or service, but usually fail at correctly analyzing their target market, which leads to less than optimal lead generation and sales.

A common mistake that a lot of startups make is simply advertising the product to everyone in the hopes of gaining customers – a big no-no as far as effective marketing goes. To avoid this situation, you need to prepare ahead and plan your campaigns by keeping in mind the people who would be the most likeliest to gravitate to what you are offering.

You can run a successful marketing campaign for your startup by following the tips and tricks shown below.

Focus on the target market

Be prepared to ensure that you’re not taking shots in the dark. Perform a market survey and gauge the favorable customers that are most receptive to your products, so that you can focus your marketing efforts on them, instead of wasting excessive amounts of money on marketing to a random crowd.

Schedule free trials or hand out samples of your product or service to prospective customers so that they can realize what they’re getting out of it. This not only helps you in attracting more leads, but also lets you understand which product features were underwhelming or overwhelming, and what more they are expecting from it.

A well-established CRM system comes equipped with powerful database management capabilities and automation tools that make it easier for you to create a substantial data repository with details like customer name, age, location, purchase history, purchasing power, etc. By analyzing the database, you can identify the leads that are not only likely to purchase from you, but may also come back for repeat business or may be influential enough to bring in enough referrals.

Some useful techniques that you can use to perform this identification is lead scoring and grading, which lets you rank your leads – the more profitable the lead is, the higher their rank – and prioritize your sales and marketing processes for them.

Work on building long-term relationships

After you’ve located your target leads, you must let your sales personnel work to effect conversions from lead to customer. This can be done by a concept known as ‘lead nurturing’, which essentially means to strive to create friendly relationships with the potential customers. Avoid hard sells, listen to the customer’s concerns, make timely follow-ups, etc.

Your objective shouldn’t be to sell your products or services to a customer, but rather to understand their value requirements and needs, and work to provide them with an appropriate value proposition. This is key to making your customers happy and loyal, so that they prefer your business over your competitors.

At the end of the day, you’re creating a mutually beneficial relationship by exchanging concepts of value – the customers’ values are met when their needs are fulfilled, and they in turn provide more business for you.